What is Epicureanism? What did Epicurus teach?

A school of philosophers that derived their name from the Athenian Epicurus, who had his 'garden' at Athens. His theory was that pleasurable emotions should be the aim of human life, quiet ease of mind being the sum of happiness. Experience and not truth was the test he applied. Paul endeavoured to turn the thoughts of the Athenians from their self-made philosophy, and their many idols, to the one true God. Acts 17:18.

The Epicureans were materialists and practically if not professedly Atheists, though they admitted the existence of gods taking no notice of any one. The Stoics were Pantheists, and equally excluded one true and living God with Whom every soul must have to do, but held a soul of the world as god. Chrysippus rather than Zeno of Citium formulated this school, which also held the soul to be a body and perishable; but the Soul of all things, of which the souls of animals are part, imperishable. Both denied creation; both fancied matter to be eternal. Divine judgment was equally set aside, sense of sin before God, and relationship with Him, on which really depends all moral duty. Chance, according to the Epicureans, characterises the world; Fate, according to the Stoics: the one as easy-going, as the other was severe, issuing in pleasure for the former, and pride for the latter.

It was an indignant and painful feeling which stirred the apostle's spirit as he beheld idols everywhere. Companionship he loved and valued, and tidings of Thessalonica he longed for, but at once he goes to the synagogue for the Jews and proselytes, as well as to the market-place every day for those that came by. The Epicureans and the Stoics soon encountered him; the former being really Atheists under the plea of chance, and looking for the dissolution of soul and body; the latter, of a sterner school which cried up necessity or fate, and an intolerant and intolerable egotism, being really Pantheists. Some had recourse to banter: 'What would this babbler say?' Others took Paul up more gravely: 'He seems to be an announcer of strange divinities [or demons], because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection.' So ignorant were these sages as to count the resurrection a goddess, the counterpart of Jesus, a god. The true God was unknown.

There were two systems of heathen philosophies in Athens that are prominent in the narrative. There were the Stoics and the Epicureans. The former were pantheists, and advocated austerity of life, untouched by human passion. It brought no real comfort to its adherents. It made man his own saviour, so the preaching by Paul of a Saviour from the penalty and power of sin was contrary to their ideas. When Paul preached Jesus and the resurrection they might well exclaim, “He seems to be a setter forth of strange gods” (Acts 17:18). The Epicureans were atheists, believing that the world was caused by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, the precursors of Darwin and Huxley. Their philosophy led to gross sensuality. Their motto was, “Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” They might well ask, “What will this babbler say?”

At Athens Paul is roused by the obtrusive idolatry, nowhere more obtrusive than there, to earnest discussion in the market-place with any whom he meets. In the synagogue he seems to have found nothing; the Athenian spirit may well have had its effect here also, even in a reaction against the new things after which the busy idlers of the city sought, and with which their scorn could confound the good news of salvation by a dying and risen Saviour. As for the Greeks it is the Epicureans and Stoics who assail the preacher, as they think, of new divinities; themselves either sceptic as to any true God whatever, — the world being neither His creation nor His care, — or else on the other side making man independent of Him, and mere fate the real governor both of God and man. The Epicurean sought his end in pleasure; the Stoic stiffened himself in self-righteousness and pride. To the latter indifference was a positive duty; in both were the sure signs of that break-down of the purer philosophy which they followed which showed itself in the open scepticism in turn following them: all showing the consciousness of the failure of philosophy in every form, and the need of that revelation against which it nevertheless so eagerly contended.

Alone in this idolatrous city, Paul's spirit was profoundly stirred by the sight of people's devotion to Satanic delusions. Therefore, he disputed with Jews in the synagogue: evidently they were guilty of entertaining idolatry; but he also disputed with others of a devout character in the markets, anyone who would be willing to meet with him. His message concerning Christ was so strange and new to the learned philosophers who encountered him that they wanted to find out more of what he was talking about. Epicureans were followers of Epicrus, who taught that the object of men should be happiness and pleasure, and forget about absolute truth. They are the hedonists of our own day. Stoicks, on the other hand, were at the opposite pole, fatalists who say that what is to be will come, and therefore we should just grit our teeth and take it. They recognize there is a God, but have no knowledge whatever of His love.

For the present, however, we do not notice more than the singular evidence here afforded of real intelligible language communicated from the very first to the head of the race. Adam had it in perfection, like the other properties of full growth, the day he was created. Doubtless in this he differed from all that sprang from him in due time and to this day who have to learn. But here God created worthily of Himself; and even infidels own that there must have been primeval causes for all that exists, of which science can give no account. It can at most only say "must be," not "is." For its fixed laws are only gathered from the constant course of things; and such a course supposes the "things that appear" to have gone on long enough for men to observe the order of nature which they thus designate. An originating first cause is no less certain; also the phenomena need time for that regular course which they describe by "laws of nature."' Eternal self-existence belongs only to God, not to the creature; and none so negligent or perhaps rebellious as geologists, if they forget how often God intervened to create as well as to destroy in a way irreconcilable either with chance or with fate. But these are the characteristic mainsprings of Epicureanism on the one hand and of Stoicism on the other, the two chief opposing systems of ancient philosophy (Acts 17:18) as of modern under new names. Without creation and the fall, man can account for nothing aright; but for knowing either we need faith, as well as their revelation, which some in their infatuation pronounce impossible. These men confessedly can make known their evil ideas to their fellows; but God, they argue, cannot communicate His good word! What is possible with men seems to their unbelief impossible with God! Could folly sink lower? Creation must be a miracle; but miracles must not be. Has not the nineteenth century settled it for ever.

Among the heathen also, at this time, change was in the air. The reverence for divinities yet outwardly remained, but Epicureans and Stoics were eating out the heart of it. The "unknown God," upon which Paul with divine sagacity had fixed his eyes, was now really characteristic of the condition, rather than even the goddess who had given her name and wisdom to the city. God was indeed more and more confessedly unknown; and great must have been the wonder, if not scorn, that met the apostle's bold declaration, — "Whom therefore ye ignorantly reverence, Him I proclaim unto you."

He goes on immediately to do this, — to set Him in His place in relation to the creature as the Maker of all, therefore the Lord of all, — a place that heathenism never truly gave Him. For the Epicurean, as for the modern scientific heathen, the world was a fortuitous collection of atoms, coming together according to laws of its own, — of the matter which it all was. For the Stoic also, God was but the force in matter, — not existent apart from it. The Platonist also believed matter to be eternal, although he attributed to God the soul which animated it and produced the actually existent world. But as a consequence God is in a continual struggle with that matter which He did not create, and by which He is limited. He can neither conquer it, nor withdraw Himself from it; He is not the absolute Creator and Lord of all whom the apostle announces — the Almighty, in whose control of all the soul of man can find its rest.

The God that made the world and all things therein is the Judge of all the world by the same risen Man Who is Saviour of such as repent and believe the gospel, be they who or what they may. Creation was owned by neither Epicureans nor Stoics: the one holding the absurdity of a fortuitous concourse of atoms, the other conceiving a fixed ever-recurring cycle of generation and dissolution in the universe, which was their god if they can be allowed to have had any. But the Creator of all things is also Lord of heaven and earth; He neither rests in apathy, nor is He the mere active soul of the passive world, but supreme Ruler, not of heaven only, but of the earth. He is not therefore to be limited to human sanctuaries, nor to be served by human hands, as though He needed anything, seeing that He Himself gives to all life and breath and the whole of what they enjoy. Some elements of these truths might be accepted here and there, for man has a conscience, but seen fully and simply they swept away the dark clouds of philosophic dreamers, maintaining for God His own place of sovereign goodness towards man, let him be ever so proud, dark, and miserable.

338 The Greeks were spinning thoughts out of their own heads, which, like spiders' webs, could catch flies and nothing else. Some said: God was too high to notice man. It sounded very grand, but then what was to become of man? Some would exalt man to an equality with God; Epicureanism and Stoicism are of all ages. God puts man in his place as a responsible person, not a reasoner. The world by wisdom knew not God. Why did the Athenians set up an altar to the "unknown God"? It was the only bit of truth Paul could pick up to use among them.